


2016 Leorai Week

by sleepingseeker



Series: 2016 Leorai Week [1]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5638261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingseeker/pseuds/sleepingseeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annual thing from over on Tumblr featuring stories and art centered on the pairing of LeoxKarai. Each chapter added will be based on that day's prompt with different ratings/warnings/themes/genres.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My contributions will be one shots - each as a chapter to this work. (Hoping to get one for each day)  
> Day one - Injured  
> Day two - Reunion  
> Day three - Space Heroes  
> Day four - Dating  
> Day five - Snow  
> Day six - Evil AU  
> Day seven - Author/Artist's choice

_“The little cracks they_

_escalated_

_before we knew it was_

_too late.”_

– _Lies_ , The Swell Season

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Her head lolled against the concrete as she caught her breath. Her eyes rolled to regard him, curled in an awkward crouch to one side, panting through gritted teeth. Without looking, she reached into a zippered pouch at her hip and pulled out a silken handkerchief.

He made no move. No indication that he saw her movement, though she knew he did.

Her arm remained suspended between them. White and still in the quiet night air, the cloth hung from between her index and middle finger. An offering, perhaps an apology.

His bloodshot eyes swept away.

His blood spilled in varied droplets, pattering the gray in tiny violent splatters.

With a sigh, she moved to stand. All in one fluid movement, on her feet, katana in hand, other releasing the cloth so that it drifted to the roof just in front of him. She turned her back to him. Made to leave.

“We’re not done here,” he rasped.

Karai paused. A glance over her shoulder. A shrug. Dismissive.

With a growl he lurched upright. The tanto gripped tight in his right hand.

As she spun, her leg shot out. Her foot knocked his hand to one side, but did not dislodge the dagger. He continued forward, twisting his shoulder around so that he grappled with her torso in a clumsy tackle meant to flip her aside. The two toppled across the rooftop.  

Her fist struck the side of his head. Another blow struck him squarely in his snout. He shook off the flash of pain, blinking watering eyes. He brought the knife down and she caught his wrist, turning it with a grunt to deflect the sharpened edge away from her throat. It tricked across her jaw, biting into the flesh and leaving a long line of red.

Leo’s elbow came down, pressing his forearm against her throat while her legs thrashed. He bucked, but pressed the weight of his bulk harder, pinning her. Her fist shot up, trying and failing, to strike at his wound underneath his left arm. She struggled a moment longer, squirming, teeth bared, until; finally, she relented and went limp under him.

Triumph shook him.

Face pale, Karai gave no indication that she was straining to breathe. Instead, calmly, she stared up at him, eyes not pleading nor surrendering, but rather, challenging him. 

And in that instant, patience all but gone, temptation enticed.

How many times had he warned her not to go after his brothers? How many chances could she expect from him? Why did she have to run him to the brink, time and again? Pushing him into an impossible situation?

The blood loss from the wound beneath his arm was beginning to make him feel dizzy. The falling drops sang a tinny song against the breastplate of her armor. Ringing out a teasing melody through the pounding of his head.

He could end this, right here. Right now. And a part of him wanted to succumb to that dark urge. It would take but slightly more pressure at her throat and he’d be done with her. Forever.

One less thing to plague his mind. To keep him awake at night.

His arm moved away from her neck and Karai gasped, turning her head, sucking in the air with greedy gulps. She made a soft sound that captured his attention, a brief moan. He felt a tremor run through her body beneath him, bringing acute awareness to how they were positioned: her body pressed beneath him, pinned between his splayed thighs.

The scent of her perspiration mingled with the tang of blood, but under that was her own, uniquely feminine scent. Heat flared. His breath caught.

As if reading that silent, primal signal, Karai’s head turned. Their eyes met. His, confused and wary, longing warring with frustration; hers flashed with knowledge, carnal and hot, returning something like unrestrained hunger to match his own.

Leonardo rolled from her. Facing away so that she might not read the flush in his cheeks, the racing of his pulse, might not see his wretched need, and what lay beneath that, so hidden, yet so eager to reveal itself to her, the taboo object of his heart’s most fervent desire.

How he hated her; loving her, terribly.

His voice betrayed only the slightest tremble as he said, “Go, Karai. Before I change my mind.”

He heard movement. Breathlessly with a hint of something more than teasing, she said, standing above and behind him, “What a pity you don’t.”

He closed his eyes as her footfalls diminished, not trusting himself to turn to watch her go. A breeze twirled the silken cloth she’d offered earlier to catch at his knee pad. He reached for it.

Tenderly, he pressed it up beneath his arm to the injury she left him with, the only one he could do anything about.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


	2. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion. Long awaited.  
> Forgive me my sentimentality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning.  
> This one shot for Day two of Leorai week is meant to be sad. Very sad. But hopefully, in an uplifting and beautiful way.   
> I hope you don't mind that that's all I'll say. I hate spoilers.

_“Rivers and roads, rivers and roads._

_Rivers_

_til_

_I_

_reach you.”_  –Rivers and Roads, The Head and the Heart

*************************************

  **Reunion**

The snowflakes swirled in the twilight, catching the solar street lamp’s glow as they tumbled, glinting shades of pale blue and pink. Above his head, between the elongated lengths of skyscrapers, where any exposed surface blinked and flashed with animated advertisements, speeders and hover-taxis zipped between the congestion of the last of the evening rush.

It was late. But not that late, he told himself.

“It’ll be open.”

He coughed and it turned into painful hacking, slowing his pace until he stopped to lean one shoulder against frosted bricks. The thin fabric of his scavenged clothing gave little protection from the cold. This January was the worst on record since the invaders from Kli492-8 wrecked the planet’s weather conditioning satellites twelve years ago.

He remembered that night clearly – it was when he’d celebrated turning sixty by eating two whole pizzas by himself, which he regretted terribly the next morning. It would have been better had anyone been there to share it with him. 

But that was a thought left to darker days and sleepless nights.

He shuddered and struggled to catch his breath, pain lancing through his chest, neck and head, making his knees quake and his body contort with cramps. Turning his head, he spat the glob of phlegm into the snow. Black.

He started at the sight, morosely and with no small amount of resignation. But immediately brushed the heavy thoughts away.

“Gotta be open,” he murmured, wiping at his glistening bottom lip.

He wouldn’t have ventured out in this cold, not in his condition, but he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He  _had_  to go out tonight. He’d gotten the call twenty minutes ago that the book had come in, at last. Only, Mr. Clarence Capra’s bookshop was closing any minute.

He straightened up and took one wavering step, followed by another. And another, through the streets he’d once dreamed of walking so freely upon.

Streets that remained unwelcoming despite alien visitors and deep space diplomats broadening the minds and hearts of Earth’s residents. Streets that offered little and less to a mutant who’d lived in shadows his entire life; no life skills to barter other than antiquated fighting skills that were considered passé at best, ridiculous at worst.

Still coughing, he hurried through the thinning crowds, mostly homeless and begging at this city level. He stumbled past a squid-like creature. It wrangled its young with four tentacles further away from the over-flowing gutters where the rodent cousins of rats – brought to Earth as stowaways aboard alien ships - were known to pull an unsuspecting youngling down into the storm drains.  

Leonardo dashed, a limping gait, past darkened shop windows shuttered with iron. The clang and rattle of the owner’s closing shop speeding his footsteps.

His confidence waned as his strength faded. His knees buckled, but he pushed forward.

“Be open. Please be open,” he murmured in a chant, breath puffing in the frigid air as he rounded the corner and hustled towards the end of the street. On the corner, he could just make out the glow from the sign, flickering: Open.

“Oh thank goodness,” he wheezed.

But as he skidded to a halt and reached for the brass handle with a fingerless glove and gave a tug, it did not open. He froze and tried again. He jiggled the handle harder. 

Nothing. 

He glared at the open sign. It flickered cheerily as it lied, glowing a warm tone of golden-yellow that gave him no comfort or heat.

Peering through the slotted blinds covering the door, he could make out no movement inside. He coughed until he doubled over. Blinking, he stared at the speckles of blood sprayed out over the snow before him. With a trembling hand, he wiped at his bottom lip. Ignoring the sticky moisture, he shuffled back to lean on the glass. His breath squeezed in painful wheezes. Dark spots whirled in his vision.

He turned and rolled to one side. Covering the glare against the window with his hands to see better, he gazed inside through the large front display window. He thought there was someone in the far reaches of the narrow store and frantically tapped at the window.

“Hello!?” He tapped harder. More insistently. “Hello? Clarence?” He choked and cleared his throat. Raising his voice as much as possible, he called, hoarsely, “Mr. Capra? It’s me, sir. I-I won’t take long, I just need that book we discussed last month. Clarence? The book that you called about?”

“Seems you’re too late,” a feminine voice spoke up next to him, startling him.

He glanced to one side and did a double take, gasping.

She stood just below his chin. Slim and petite, composed with her hands tucked neatly into the side pockets of her long coat. Her head was covered in a thick furred hat which came down to the very tops of her eyes. Her green, thick-lashed eyes that he’d recognize anywhere stared at him with expectation.

His heart stumbled.

He stood gaping, staring like a child witnessing a miracle. The snowflakes settled atop her narrow shoulders, upon the dark woolen coat she wore. Each tumbled upon the other. Each spiny branch in stark relief, superimposed. Just as the crimson of her lips, the supple smile just at the very edges of her mouth as she considered him from beneath that hat.

To speak her name would be to shatter the illusion. For this could be nothing else.

Karai had been gone for . . . for a long time now.

His mouth worked but no sound came forth. Tears pricked the backs of his eyes.

Taking her gaze from him, she leaned forward and peered into the window, then straightened. “It’s closed all right.”

Reluctantly, and with one more glance back at her, he checked the sign. “But,” he started, thinking he was speaking more to himself than the apparition next to him, “the sign was just. He just . . . He just called.”

His sentence cut short as he started coughing again. Blinding pain sliced through him, crippling him and folding him over his knees until he fell forward onto his knees.

When the fit passed and he opened his watering eyes, he saw a white cloth held out to him just in front of his nose. Hesitantly, he reached for it, expecting his fingers to go through the thing, since it could not really be here.

Just as she could not, possibly, reasonably, be here, next to him.

Of course, he could have finally gone mad. Like his father before him in his last months of life. The memory speared a surprisingly painful spike through him. It had been years since he’d last thought of his master. Yet, the pain was real.

He took the handkerchief. It, too, seemed very real. He wiped his mouth. It came away blotched in crimson. He folded it and tucked it away, oddly ashamed.

“It’s okay.”

He looked up and blinked at the snow in his eyes.

“Keep it.” She looked behind her, over one shoulder as if distracted by something or someone.

He leaned forward to see what or whom might be back there, tipping slightly to one side as dizziness swept over him, but could only see the distant street blurred by some soft glow or light. Try as he might, he could not detect or understand the source. A sudden urge to keep her here, to grab her attention and make her turn back to him gripped him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

She turned back to him. “What’s that?”

Relief swelled past the pain, easing it to the shadows of his mind.

He sniffed and gathered his courage. Pushed back against the poisonous waves of regret and guilt. “I said I’m sorry.” He braced for her recrimination, her damning him and his brothers, her anger, her vengeful vows, curses, anything.

She tipped her head and her smile only softened along with her eyes.

He thought then that he’d never seen her eyes that way. He swallowed nervously.

“I am, too.”

She sighed and gave a slight roll of her eyes, so much like how she was back then - a million years ago, when they were young, children playing with sharp things, chasing vengeance that had nothing to do with them - that he choked on the sorrow of lost years. Of actions taken in the name of honor that were anything but.

“I know, I have to do it right,” she said, speaking to no one that he could see. “I mean. I’m sorry, too. For everything.”

They stared at one another. His hands rubbing along his thighs after a while, unsure of what to do - realizing that he didn’t feel cold any longer, didn’t feel the press of his sickness in his chest when he took a breath, realizing that he wasn’t breathing at all, actually - when she suddenly reached out to him.

“Friends?”

He stared at her hand for a beat and then, slowly, reached up to take it. With her help, he rose up to stand, still holding tight to her hand. Close to her, so close he could see the happiness in her eyes, the real happiness. Something else he didn’t remember ever seeing in her before.

And what a sight it was. Enough to stop his heart.

She made a small sound that might have been a laugh, but turned away before he could return her blushing grin.

“C’mon, hero.” She gave a slight tug on his hand. “Let’s go home.”

He moved to go, but hesitated at the window, glancing once more at the books beyond the glass. A shadow passed over his face.

Karai turned to catch his hesitation and she tugged once more at his hand. “What are you waiting for?”

“My . . . book.”

“There’s books to read, more books than you can ever imagine. But Donatello keeps everything organized, even with Mikey knocking them over every chance he gets.” She smiled and Leo could only feel the tightening in his throat. “You’d be so proud. And Raphael has a few he’s been saving for you. Stacked up to my hip.”

He looked back at her, blinking, pulling away, suddenly afraid.

“Hey,” she said softly. “They’re waiting for you. Have been for so long. Do you really want to keep them waiting any longer?”

“I-I’m not sure. There’s things I need to . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t face -”

She reached out and took his other hand. “Leo, it’s okay. Trust me.”

He felt her hands in his, the warmth so real and comforting, the light behind her welcoming and safe. Warm.

His eyes rose to meet hers and he saw only love there. The love he’d sorely missed for longer than he could remember.

Leo said, voice breathless, as he let go, “Okay.” 

He nodded firmly, feeling more sure, stronger. Whole.

 “I’m ready.”


	3. Day 3 - Space Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rating K - Words: 636 - Humor/Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So happy I got this one done last night! A detour from my usual stuff, something light and sweet, set in a future like that of Tender Trap or Lost in the Gloaming, or maybe one where everything actually works out for them.
> 
> It’s possible, isn’t it? I want to believe so.

 

***************************

**Space Heroes**

_“Don’t worry_

_about a thing._

_‘Cuz every little thing_

_gonna be alright._ ” –Three Little Birds, Bob Marley & the Wailers

**********

He squints against the flickering light, red-rimmed eyes watering, unable to move, pinned in place by the precious weight resting on his chest and collar bone. To his right, just out of reach, the remote. He doesn’t remember putting on the television. Doesn’t remember if this particular show had been on when he first sat down, but it seems to be some kind of marathon.

That or this show’s episodes were much longer than he recalled. So long ago now. Back when it was new (VHS tapes found in a pile of electronics Donnie had been scavenging) and amazing (regular television cartoons never had so much action and peril and romance!) and he could not get his fill (Just one more minute, Master, then it’ll be commercial, I swear. I’ll do extra katas to make up for being late).

When the episodes ended too soon, leaving him with cliff hangers that left him breathless, craving more, worried for his captain and his captain’s crew. When his role model could do no wrong. Make no mistakes. Every decision executed with absolute certainty that it was the correct choice. When right and wrong, good and evil, were as starkly juxtaposed as the hero-captain and the villainous-aliens in this, his favorite show.

Had so much really changed? Had he grown so old in so short a time?

But it’s hard to think straight on three weeks of little to no sleep. Ninja or not.  

A sound behind him, soft and shuffling. He cranes his neck to peer over the rounded top of his daughter’s slumbering head. Karai stands in her mismatched pajamas, blinking in the uneven light. Her robe is in the process of crawling off one shoulder. Hair in wild tangles piling atop her head. Purple circles sweep beneath her eyes and her face is ghostly pale.

She’s as beautiful as ever.

“Karai,” he whispers. “You shouldn’t be up.”

She points to the television as she wobbles unevenly over to him and flops onto the couch with a pained grunt. “What’re you watching?” she asks, all in a tumbled mumble.

He glances at the t.v., then back to the woman he’d die for, the woman who nearly died but three weeks ago, during the birth of their miraculous child.

“Nothing.”

Karai stares at the television for a moment before sliding closer. Her head falls to his shoulder. One arm wraps loosely over their infant sleeping against his chest, cradling the baby and latching her fingers along the top of his opposite shoulder. She snuggles closer, eyes on the television screen.

“If you give me the remote, I can try to find something better,” Leo whispers to the top of her head.

But she shakes it. “Nah, is good.”

They fall silent and watch as Captain Ryan stands on a green boulder, hands on his hips, scanning the populace gathered before him, and determines the future of an entire colony of aliens with the surety of a child ordering their favorite ice cream.

Leo settles back with a soft sigh, content, if not exhausted. His daughter sleeps soundly, making the tiniest of purring noises with each exhale. Karai is soft and warm next to him. And most importantly: healing.

A treacherous, fleeting, delicate thing for them, to be like this. Safe. And they are, the three of them, safe. For now.

A peaceful smile plays along his mouth as he drifts in and out of sleep.

Karai murmurs, half-asleep, “That captain is hot.”

Leo’s eyes pop open. He glances to the right, over Karai’s head, but the remote remains out of reach. On the screen, Captain Ryan gives him a jaunty wink. But maybe it’s just the sleep deprivation.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


	4. Dating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words: 1036 - Rated T - Angst - Any ‘verse
> 
> Finally one from Karai’s POV.
> 
> #######

 

**Dating**

Karai runs the brush through her hair a final time, one eye locked on the mirror. She squints, trying to decide if her eyeliner is even, but the digital clock’s reflection tells her that it’s time to move. She spins and drops, reaching under her unmade bed to grab her boots. As she pulls them on, an email alert lights up her laptops screen.

She flops back and groans when she sees that it’s from her math tutor, Meihui Lin. It’s another warning. The final warning, in fact.

She’ll fail if she doesn’t turn in the latest assignment. The study guide she’d completely forgotten about.

“Gah!”

Karai taps the keyboard, bringing up the online assignment and drops her face into the bundle of blankets.  Without looking, she clicks the minimize button and slams the cover down. Later. After the date. 

With a sweep of her arm, she sends it into her messenger bag and hurries to the door. She slides it open an inch and stops to peer into the empty hallway.

Slipping into the private corridor, bag on her hip, running on tip-toe, she makes it past her father’s quarters to the servant’s stairway. Skipping down the flight of stairs, she grins, giddy with the thrill of sneaking out, forgetting her worries, replacing them with anticipation of seeing him again. Tonight.

Without checking, she exits the stairwell and runs straight into a small group of Foot soldiers. They stop their conversation and turn in unison to stare at her before dropping into deep bows.

“Uh, yeah. Whatever, carry on,” she blurts, sidling around them. But is stopped as a taller soldier straightens.

“Miss Karai,” he stutters, voice muffled by the mask. “I wanted to-to . . . that is, Miss Karai. If it is no imposition. I would like to inquire, or rather ask –“

She could swear the others are snickering behind him. The voice is somewhat familiar, but she honestly has no idea who this person in front of her is. She motions with her hands, fluttering in front of his face. “Take that off, I can’t understand you at all.”

He hastily removes the mask to reveal a shock of thick blonde hair. His face is thin, but masculine, a long aquiline nose, with dark-lashed, blue eyes. She notices as he smiles that he’s got dimples, two of them.  His hands fumble with the mask and for a moment no one speaks.

Karai, irritated, shakes her head, “ _Yes_?”

“Oh, uh, yes. Yes! I’m, uh, from sparring class?” He presses his hand against his wide chest, face searching hers for recognition.He is easily a foot or more taller than her.

She continues to stare blankly, at a loss. 

“Three times a week?”

Still nothing.

One of the soldiers nudges him. He coughs. “I’m Garrick. From Second Division. Your sparring partner of choice for the past six months.”

Karai is nodding, but has no idea what this Garrick has stopped her for – then he goes on and her expression drops.

“I was hoping that – if-if you didn’t mind, perhaps, I could escort you tonight to your destination.” Noting her expression, he hurries on, “I would stay in the shadows, without disturbing you in the least. It’s just, I thought, perhaps, tonight you’d like some, uh, um, company. Tonight?”

Karai face darkens as she scowls.

Garrick steps back. 

“You think I need a chaperone?”

Garrick sputters and chokes, face going bright pink. “N-Not at all, Miss. No. Not in the least. I-I just. I just thought –“ 

He gives up beneath her icy stare. The soldiers behind him are all quiet and still, no doubt memorizing every detail of Garrick’s crash and burn for later hazing. They’ll be merciless, she’s sure.

She doesn’t care. That’s what he gets. The fool.

Karai storms off, face burning, heart racing, and wondering why she feels so angry. She knows exactly what Garrick is looking for – and it isn’t to be her chaperone. 

Is it such a bad thing to be admired? To be found attractive and to be asked out? Garrick is certainly attractive and a skilled fighter in the dojo. Why isn’t she at least flattered?

_What is wrong with me?_

She slips through the doors and races towards the neighborhood haunt agreed upon. The night air, chilled and sharp, clears her emotional turmoil a bit and for a while, there is only the sound of her heels, the puffing small gasps of her breath. The moon chasing above. The ground following below. She in the center. Balance.

She works the lock on the back of the old theatre and disappeared inside. The room is empty except for an old man slumped in the front row, snoring lightly in rumpled clothes. She edges her way to the far back, to the last row and takes a seat.

“Thought you’d never make it,” a voice murmurs next to her and she nearly gives a start. But she doesn’t want to give Leonardo the satisfaction, so she keeps herself completely composed.

As her eyes adjust, she makes out his face, tipped in her direction, his eyes luminous in the dark. From the corner of her eye, she spies motion. In his hand, a small white rose.

She takes it and sits back, settling at once into the arm he throws around her. He is warm and smells of the night air and oiled steel, mildly of musk and sweat.

It hits her then, and shakes her, filling her with a cold, sinking dread. Perhaps the reason Garrick’s clumsy attempts fills her with fury is because he is exactly everything that her father would approve of.

A tremor of doubt makes her shiver. Her eyes sweep up to Leonardo’s face, lit by the flickering black and white movie on the large screen before them, oblivious to her internal conflict. 

Was this, any of this, real? Or merely a perfectly crafted thorn to jab into her father’s side, formed of spite and bitterness, rebellion and willfulness. Nothing more.

As if reading her thoughts, Leonardo peers down at her. He leans over and tenderly kisses her forehead.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he whispers.

And suddenly, she reaches up, pulling him down, kissing him frantically, passionately, losing herself in the warming flare of his returned heat. 

Drowning her fears in his embrace. Burying her doubts. Silencing them.

For now.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


	5. Evil AU - Another Place, Another Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated T - Angst - Evil AU - 900+ words

 

 _“Pour me down the drain, I disappear,_  
Like every honest thing I used to hear.  
. . .  
The house had burned,

_but nothing there was mine.” – In Our Prime, The Black Keys_

_**Another Place, Another Time**_

The path she’d taken earlier when she’d made her escape was a familiar one to him. A mistake that he wondered at. Was there a part of her that hoped he’d find her? On that rooftop garden where they’d first met, before . . . before he knew who she was, before his heart had been stolen. Before he learned their shared irrevocable destiny.

Had she really believed that he would be persuaded to leave?

Leonardo climbed to stand, the katana she’d knocked from his grasp retrieved and gripped tight. She wouldn’t have gotten far. Not with the injuries he’d given her. He calmed his breathing, but found it difficult.

Did she really believe him that disloyal to his family? His master?

And yet.

Wasn’t there a part of him that longed for what that picture she’d painted for them? Together – but free.

He shook himself. “No,” he said. The word clouded in a frozen puff before disappearing before his face, like any options that he imagined he ever had in this life. It was not for him to choose. Not any of it. 

There was only duty to his clan. Obedience to his master.

 #

The trail of blood led him directly to the place she’d cornered herself.

There at the end of the alleyway, huddled and panting, wounded and weaponless, she crouched. He closed the distance between them. His perspiring limbs steamed as he sheathed his sword. He halted a few feet from her.

Her gaze never left him, watching him with a grim expression.

“No more running.”

She continued to stare at him, face pale and pinched with pain.

He stepped closer and she stiffened. “Get back,” she growled, voice hoarse and quaking. Weak.

“Don’t make this any harder on yourself. If my brothers had cornered you instead–“

They would have killed her, ending what they felt was a pointless pursuit of a worthless addition to their family. She refused to accept her place in their clan. Refused her birthright. For his brothers it equated to a simple solution: execution.

“I wish they had,” she spat. The effort cost her as she fell back against the chain-link fence behind her. 

This gave him pause. A pain speared through his chest, and though he remained passive, the breath in his throat caught and his heart hammered, struggling, wounded.

So, she preferred death to him.

It had not been his choice. None of this. 

His expression hardened. The blue of his eyes sharp and flashing as he said, “The death you long for will be delivered, but not by my hand.”

“No,” she said, laughing bitterly, tasting blood. “The rat will have the pleasure. My supposed father.”

His jaw worked. “You belong with us . . . with the clan of your birth.”

“Don’t you mean,” she panted, eyes narrowing, “with you.”

Before he could reply, she turned her face, pressing it against the rough bricks as a crippling cramp stole through her. She gasped; shuddered. Felt his hands on her, gathering her up like a broken doll. She was too weak to fight him. The blood loss from the myriad of superficial wounds he’d given her earlier did exactly as he no doubt planned. There was no use in resistance. The time for that was done.

“Know that you bring me to my death.”

Leonardo’s heart beat harder. But he did not hesitate as he jogged down the alley. He had no choice. No choice.

“I will refuse him,” she whispered, turning her face to hide tears threatening to spill over, breathing in his scent above the blood, listening to the rapid beat of his heart, “again.”

 _And so refuse me,_  Leonardo thought, bitterness stealing through him even as his heart contracted with pain. No, she would not want to be bride to a monster. He was a fool to ever think different.

Leonardo said nothing, glancing down at her as he ran, returning her to the underground lair that would inevitably become her tomb. And for the briefest moment, she thought she detected sorrow, immeasurable and akin to her own depth of pain, written in his storming eyes.

And for a moment, she considered relenting. For she loved him, this stoic, strong warrior who was really just a boy playing at the role. She loved him with everything she had. It was not the union that she despised. For if only he’d have accepted her offer of running away together. If only he’d cast away his allegiance to the darkness.

There might have been a chance. A chance for happiness.

But no. He would not give up his fealty and she could not betray what she was and where she came from. She could never hurt the man she called father. Oroku Saki, the man who had taken her away from the violence-loving, savage clan, raising her to be balanced, true and honorable. No. She could never dishonor him by accepting a place with them. Could never be a part, large or small, in their evil.

Never.

He held her gently, but firmly, as he carried her down into the tunnels. In the darkness, she pressed her lips to his jaw, kissing him tenderly, knowing that she was kissing him goodbye.

Perhaps, in another life, their souls would find a place free from pain. A place where they could love one another and be at peace. Perhaps, she would meet him again, in another place, another time. And there they would find happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably be my last entry for this year! Thanks for reading and for the feedback!!


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